About: Mayor Larry Morrissey delivers his ninth State of the City speech. It typically lasts an hour. The event is free and open to the public. Tours of the Coronado will be offered from 5 to 5:45 p.m.

ROCKFORD — The imposing problems Rockford faces haven’t changed since Mayor Larry Morrissey’s State of the City address last year.

Rockford continues to struggle with high unemployment, poverty, foreclosures and falling property values. Reversing those trends won’t happen with marginal improvements like routine roadwork, Morrissey said in an interview with the Register Star in advance of his annual speech. Rockford must tackle tough issues head on or risk becoming comfortable in failure, he said.

“We’ve had so many years of struggle and challenge that we’ve forgotten at times what success feels like,” Morrissey said. “Hopefully we’re at a point where we’re ready to do some things differently because we’ve known that everything else we’ve tried hasn’t worked.”

When he takes the podium Wednesday ﻿at the Coronado Performing Arts Center to deliver his ninth State of the City speech, Morrissey plans to outline the outside-the-margin initiatives he says are pushing the city in a positive direction.

“A Better Rockford Today” is the theme of this speech, which is typically an annual progress report and chance for the mayor to outline the coming year’s agenda as Rockford’s elected leader.

He said he will focus on reducing poverty — which he said is the city’s biggest obstacle — through improved education and entrepreneurship. He plans to reinforce the importance of infrastructure and development projects he says are pushing the city in a positive direction.

Morrissey also sees promise in the work of Alignment Rockford, the organization that works to support public school students’ achievement and long-term job prospects. He wants to see educators encourage more entrepreneurship, which the Rockford School District and Rockford Housing Authority has done through a partnership with Internet sales company Etsy. The program helps students and people struggling to find work earn a living by selling handmade products.

Page 2 of 2 - Those types of programs are meant to help Rockford address its systemic poverty by reducing obstacles to employment.

Ald. Venita Hervey, D-5, said the programs aren’t enough to reverse the city’s high poverty rate. She said well-intentioned agencies invite poor people into Rockford with the promise of support, but the focus needs to be on helping those already living here.

“I want us to come up with a plan to start reducing the amount of poverty that we’re bringing into the city, because we can’t sustain it,” Hervey said. “I want to cut off the spigot and help the people that we have here.”

Einar Forsman, president and chief executive officer of the Rockford Chamber of Commerce, said the business community also wants to hear plans for road and infrastructure improvements.

“We obviously have a lot of roads that need to be repaired after a long winter,” Forsman said. “We’d like to obviously see continued investment in our city from an infrastructure standpoint.”

Forsman said he’s eager to hear updates about geographic policing and other efforts to reduce crime in the community. Ald. Joe Chiarelli, R-14, shared similar hopes for Morrissey’s address.

“People are concerned about, when they walk out their front door, the roads and the crime around them,” Chiarelli said. “It’s great to have a lot of big vision — and I appreciate the mayor’s vision on all these projects — but we also have to bring it down to the level where the people walk out their front door.”

In the month leading up to Wednesday’s address, Morrissey has taken an abridged version of the speech to a half-dozen stops across Rockford.

The goal, Morrissey said, was to take information about city initiatives straight to residents. Morrissey said he wanted to include them in the process to improve Rockford rather than just announce his plans from the pulpit once a year.

He plans to continue to meet with residents in coming months.

“It’s important that we find other ways to get information out about what we’re doing,” Morrissey said. “That’s a theme that we want to keep building off: better engagement, better communication.”